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• I lived in Seattle for the first 18 years of my life - I understand artificial light very well.
• I have narcolepsy, so I know what it's like to sleep during the day & work at night in artificial lighting conditions for prolonged periods of time; However, light definitely doesn't affect me at all since I have no hypocretin receptors in my brain! That's the protein (aka orexin) that is key to the chemical reaction that takes light stimulus & creates dopamine, noradrenaline & other wake-promoting chemicals in your brain.
  • Narcolepsy = lack of hypocretin or lack of hypocretin receptors
  • OK, light does affect me in a couple small ways: We all need UV light to turn 7-dehydrocholesterol into vitamin D
• I'm a chemist, so I understand the scientific method... Here's a recent manuscript that was accepted in JChemEd & is pub pending. (someone asked for a link to an article in a peer-reviewed journal)
• I spotted this poorly written article due to these factors.

Even on the off chance that the About network doesn't have all the information you need, they have a large number of links to sites with relevant information across the Web, so there's a very good chance that you will be able to use them to find what you are looking for.
Also...although these are not strictly an answer to your question, I would still heartily encourage you to follow the links to these (listed in a suggested order of reading...my probably misguided opinion only) text files, web pages, and books, as I think they could be of enormous benefit to both your children and yourself...indeed, anyone who wishes to read them. Although I understand that several of these could possibly only be understood at tertiary level, they also as far as I know are not normally included in *general* curriculums, and IMHO they should be.

• The Allegory of the Cave by Plato
• Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences, by Rene Descartes
• Guide to Ethics & Morality
• The Logic FAQ
• The Art of War, by Sun Tzu
• The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith
• The Sovereign Individual, by James Davidson
• The 48 Laws of Power, by Robert Greene
• The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli

It used to be in the past that the education systems of most nations didn't want us to know the why (philosophy, religion, history, political theory) of life, but were content enough to let us know the how. (Science without analysis, numeracy and literacy skills, etc) Now however we are seeing that primarily in America, but also in other places, government education departments no longer even want to allow people to know the how.

Mathematics is part of the how - a means to an end, a way of solving problems - but it is not a destination in itself. The material I've given you links to in my second section is concerned with finding out *why* - "Why am I here? Who am I? How do I know what reality is? What do I want to do with my life? What moral values do I believe in?"
The answers to these questions are far more important than becoming merely literate or mathematically capable for their own sake. Figure out what your purpose is first, and the rest, although still requiring work, will be relatively easy. That is what the links in the second list will help you do, and it's not something you'll be taught to do in any contemporary public school, either...Governments consider people with purpose to be highly dangerous.

NASA:This Carina sub-cloud is particularly striking partly because it's clear definition stimulates the human imagination (e.g. it could be perceived as a superhero flying through a cloud, arm up, with a saved person in tow below).

Rodney Dill:However, there is a great picture on the Astronomy Picture of the Day that looks like its flipping you off.

Begging the question is a form of logical fallacy. The phrase "begs the question" is not equivalent to the phrase "raises the question."

http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/begs.html
http://skepdic.com/begging.html
http://www.roomours.co.uk/ryder3.htm
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/begging-t he-question.html

Next time you choose to assume an indignant and self-righteous tone, please make sure you know something about the subject in question. Thank you.

Love,
AC

They slowed it down to around 37 miles per hour, and later eventually stopped it completely. That's far slower than 45 miles per second.

From that same National Human Radiobiology Tissue Repository:

The health effects from plutonium, americium, and uranium intakes by humans, as determined with USTUR data can be summarized in two words, virtually none. A study of the causes of death of USTUR organ donors has been completed. The study showed that the vast majority of USTUR donors died from the same diseases that have caused the deaths of most of the U. S. population, heart disease, strokes, and cancers not necessarily associated with radiation exposure. This is in spite of the fact that the USTUR donors are a biased population in that a number of donors volunteered for the program after having been diagnosed with cancer. The average age at death of USTUR registrants is 63 years (range between 25 and 91 years). The average age of USTUR registrants who are still living is 73 years (range between 30 and 93 years).

[bold emphasis added]

Greenpeace reports that between 1950 and 1993 there have been 380 nuclear weapons accidents, some involving the accidental "dirty bomb" incidents, such as the dispersion of nuclear materials over Palomares in southern Spain.

Now according to the the National Human Radiobiology Tissue Repository who studied the Palomares incident as well as many other cases, a 78 year old person with elevated Pu in their bones will only have a 0.14285 probability of dying this year, whereas a normal american 78 year old will have an average probaility of dying this year of 0.12780.

We're already dropping nuclear material all over ourselves, and for the most part, you aren't going to hear about it until it's declassified.

Furthermore, have you been to Hiroshima and stood under the peace dome? Have you seen the children playing in the schools at Nagasaki?

The oppertunites for using peaceful nuclear power to explore space far outweigh the risks. Those accidents haven't degraded my environmental quality. I'm sure that a deliberate attack on myself would, but even that will heal with time.

We are talking about the power to reach out and travel the cosmos.

the chinese ming Emperor Zhu Di built a massive navy which traded extensively in the pacific, reached africa and almost discovered america.

When Emperor Zhu died, his sucessor was advised to lessen the tax burden of the navy, and burned all the ships. Result? Other more outward looking seafaring nations whipped them.

If we don't have deep space capability, then we are dead meat when we come across those who do. Especially if they are ex-earth colonists who decide to return. No chance of benevolance through alien genetics there.

More detail here.

In my opinion, the orgy/dance scene was reminiscient of the opening dance scene from "Blade", only longer and less effective. I wish they had cut this sequence down, as I felt it was unnecessary....

Overall though, a decent sequel with some nice CG treats.

If you've taken a philosophy class, you'd have recognized the Matrix as a new incarnation of Plato's allegory of the cave from The Republic, later expressed as "The Evil Deceiver" by Descartes and later still as the "brain in a vat" scenario by Hilary Putnam.

In the sequel, the filmmakers move on to questions of free will vs. determinism vs. fate. These issues were also nicely articulated in one of the segments of the animated Art Linklater film "The Waking Life", for anyone who's interested.

So it was cool to have a new philosophical issue raised. To "What is the nature of reality... and is it all a sham?" has been added "What is the nature of choice... and is it all a sham?"

Plus, the freeway chase scene was incredible ;)

W

I hope that you're not just baiting me.

W Gibson is credited w/ describing/definig a great deal of the characteristics of cyberpunk. He's written a number of books, with Neuromancer generally considered the most important. If you like sci-fi or just technology, check his stuff out. Get Neuromancer and read it and keep reminding yourself that he wrote it 20 years ago.

Google turned up this academic jewel.

Actually, thanks for that - had no idea that was the correct usage, and I'll try to pick it up in the future.

Man alive, that common errors site is a pedant's dream. :)

An argument that improperly assumes as true the very point the speaker is trying to argue for is said in formal logic to "beg the question." Here is an example of a question-begging argument: "This painting is trash because it is obviously worthless." The speaker is simply asserting the worthlessness of the work, not presenting any evidence to demonstrate that this is in fact the case. Since we never use "begs" with this odd meaning ("to improperly take for granted") in any other phrase, many people mistakenly suppose the phrase implies something quite different: that the argument demands that a question about it be asked--raises the question. If you're not comfortable with formal terms of logic, it's best to stay away from this phrase, or risk embarrassing yourself."

Source

I know, I know, telling a /. editor how to use his language properly is futile ...

Perhaps she'll make it illegal to crack the Code of Hammurabi ...

Islam bring us science, mathematics, philosophy, astronomy and humanism when we was in the dark age.

Oops hit submit too early. Let's try that again.

Timothy is chipping in with his 2 cents for the Microsoft marketing drive starting tomorrow, Thursday. I really wish there were a way to block both the ads and the shills/astroturfers.

The high level of security potentially available from using OpenBSD has been named as a worry. A number of posts have mentioned the nebulus terrorist threat and touched on the effects of lobbying. When you take into account lobbying from software companies, then the other real targets are nation states like Germany.

If Germany goes with Linux, BSD, or one of the other Free or Open Source operating systems, then they remain beholden to neither Microsoft nor the White House.

• *BSD / GPL licenses ensure freedom in how the systems are used and deployed
• Security + source code audits ensure that data and systems are less vulnerable to foreign control / monitoring.
• Development money spent on F/OSS drives the local economy.

If, on the other hand, F/OSS is blocked then they suffer not only financial punishment for the recent UN Security Council issues but also stay on a short leash:

• WPA ensures that MS/Bush can pull the plug
• DRM + EUCD + proprietary file formats keeps them on the leash
• Weak security and possible backdoors ensures that any resistance can be countered/monitored electronically.

Well you finally got hear hear right, but you're still off on tack. It's a sailing term.

Here, I just found this explanation for you.

It is impressive that this lab quickly cranked out the complete sequence of this coronavirus, and it's alot more informative than the story that made headlines a few days ago here . But, spotted dolphin rightly points out that this is only the coronavirus. As far as I'm aware no on has fulfilled Koch's postulates to prove THIS virus is the causative agent of "SARS". It's possible this sequence will be very useful, but it's too early to tell.

but my only problem with Matrix is that it borrows heavily from other sources of pop culture

It also borrows heavily from classical philosophy as well. The general idea parallels one of the ideas that Plato writes of in The Republic, namely the allegory of the cave.

I personally think the Matrix is cheese, it doesn't have a strong message, and is a little too melodramatic...

To put it briefly, what if a group of people lived in darkness, chained in a cave. What if they could only face forward, and all they could ever see is shadows ahead of them, shadows of people travelling by behind a wall. If they spent their whole lives like this, they would believe that the shadows were the people, they were the objects. What if, then, you 'liberated' someone from their chains, and took them outside? Showed them the real physical objects, not just the shadows? Socrates argues that he would be overwhelmed by this reality, but that he would eventually get used to it. If he returned to his friends in the cave, however, they would not believe him, could not believe him, unless they were shown for themselves.

Socrates uses this as an allegory of his own life, and of the struggles of philosophers - the cave-dwellers are the general populace, and Socrates is the one who returned to the populace with tales of 'reality' which they did not believe. The cost of his attempt to convince them was his own life.

Sound similar? Neo is the one who has seen shadows. 'It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes', blinding him from the reality that Morpheus showed him. Still, when he returns to the Matrix, he could not just tell everyone the truth, because no one would believe him. No one would accept the truth.

There is also another similarity to these two stories, and that is of Jesus from the Bible. The lives of Jesus and Socrates are remarkably parallel, with the crux of the difference being that Jesus rose again after death - as did Neo.

The Matrix actually has a lot of Christian themes, which go well with its being released on Easter weekend, which was no accident. Consider Neo - Greek for 'new', and an anagram for 'one'. Consider Thomas Anderson - a doubting Thomas (John 20:24-29) who does not accept the unreality of the Matrix, or the reality of his abilities and identity - and an Anderson (Swedish for 'Andrew's son' from the Greek root andr-, meaning 'man'), a 'son of man'. He's your saviour, man. Your own personal Jesus Christ.

Another one: Descartes' classic 'I think therefore I am'. To us, it's a cliched phrase, but consider what it meant when he originally concieved of the notion. In his time, mankind lived through the church, and existed by the grace of god. We humans were His creation, and owed our existance to him, we did not exist without His grace. Then Descartes, laying in bed until noon as he usually did, closed his eyes to disbelieve everything he could. He decided to try to disbelieve everything that he could not prove, and in the end, with his eyes closed, trying all though he might, the only thing he knew for sure was that he existed. He knew this, because if he didn't exist, then who was it that was so certain he existed? What made him him existed, his thoughts and feelings and memories, so therefore, he was himself, no matter what, and no one could take that away from him.

In The Matrix, humans are turned, as Morpheus points out, into batteries. Stuck in pods, the Matrix gives them a false reality, with false people and false lives, doing false actions in false places. In this dehumanizing state, nothing is real, so what is the value of anything? What is the value in not going on a killing spree? It doesn't matter, in the end, because it's all false, but no matter what you do, you are still you, and no one, not even the Mach

This is grammatically incorrect. You are talking about a singular programmer, hence "himself/herself" and "his/her" labors. You would need to use "both for the programmers themselves..."

(Ducks flying rotten tomato)

Oh no you don't.

Using the plural pronoun to refer to a single person of unspecified gender is an old and honorable pattern in English, not a newfangled bit of degeneracy or a politically correct plot to avoid sexism (though it often serves the latter purpose). People who insist that "Everyone has brought his own lunch" is the only correct form do not reflect the usage of centuries of fine writers.

http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/errors/they.html

Even that site has errors.

It decides to apply english to computer terms. That's a big mistake.

A list of his errors:

CD-ROM. A CD-ROM is a DRIVE, not a DISC. A CD is a disc, or, if one wants to use the long form, a CD-ROM disc is a disc that fits in a CD-ROM. This is extremely common usage by those in the know, therefore the author is de-facto wrong.

UFO. While I'm not a Raelian, I'm very sure the common usage of the word UFO by such people is to mean anything that is unidentifiable as human.

OK. Flat out stupid griping by a person who has nothing to gripe about. OK is a valid acronym, spelt without periods. Don't like it? TS. Yeah, that's an acronym too. Look it up and be amazed! Oh, and on the internet we rarely put periods in acronyms. Common usage and all that again...

Drive. Please gripe more! Not! What the hell is this all about? Common usage by Billions and Billions (served) is Hard Disk. Don't like it? TS again!

Lite. Hey asshole, I'm a humanist and I spell it analog. Nice job putting words in people's mouths and ignoring how 300 million people spell things. Also good job ignoring entire dictionaries worth of information telling you you're wrong. I'll say it again: Asshole.

How can I trust a site that doesn't accept the common usage of words in their respective fields? Stop treading on people's toes, lest you be trodden on, pretentious grammarian.

Even that site has errors.

It decides to apply english to computer terms. That's a big mistake.

A list of his errors:

CD-ROM. A CD-ROM is a DRIVE, not a DISC. A CD is a disc, or, if one wants to use the long form, a CD-ROM disc is a disc that fits in a CD-ROM. This is extremely common usage by those in the know, therefore the author is de-facto wrong.

UFO. While I'm not a Raelian, I'm very sure the common usage of the word UFO by such people is to mean anything that is unidentifiable as human.

OK. Flat out stupid griping by a person who has nothing to gripe about. OK is a valid acronym, spelt without periods. Don't like it? TS. Yeah, that's an acronym too. Look it up and be amazed! Oh, and on the internet we rarely put periods in acronyms. Common usage and all that again...

Drive. Please gripe more! Not! What the hell is this all about? Common usage by Billions and Billions (served) is Hard Disk. Don't like it? TS again!

Lite. Hey asshole, I'm a humanist and I spell it analog. Nice job putting words in people's mouths and ignoring how 300 million people spell things. Also good job ignoring entire dictionaries worth of information telling you you're wrong. I'll say it again: Asshole.

How can I trust a site that doesn't accept the common usage of words in their respective fields? Stop treading on people's toes, lest you be trodden on, pretentious grammarian.

Even that site has errors.

It decides to apply english to computer terms. That's a big mistake.

A list of his errors:

CD-ROM. A CD-ROM is a DRIVE, not a DISC. A CD is a disc, or, if one wants to use the long form, a CD-ROM disc is a disc that fits in a CD-ROM. This is extremely common usage by those in the know, therefore the author is de-facto wrong.

UFO. While I'm not a Raelian, I'm very sure the common usage of the word UFO by such people is to mean anything that is unidentifiable as human.

OK. Flat out stupid griping by a person who has nothing to gripe about. OK is a valid acronym, spelt without periods. Don't like it? TS. Yeah, that's an acronym too. Look it up and be amazed! Oh, and on the internet we rarely put periods in acronyms. Common usage and all that again...

Drive. Please gripe more! Not! What the hell is this all about? Common usage by Billions and Billions (served) is Hard Disk. Don't like it? TS again!

Lite. Hey asshole, I'm a humanist and I spell it analog. Nice job putting words in people's mouths and ignoring how 300 million people spell things. Also good job ignoring entire dictionaries worth of information telling you you're wrong. I'll say it again: Asshole.

How can I trust a site that doesn't accept the common usage of words in their respective fields? Stop treading on people's toes, lest you be trodden on, pretentious grammarian.

Even that site has errors.

It decides to apply english to computer terms. That's a big mistake.

A list of his errors:

CD-ROM. A CD-ROM is a DRIVE, not a DISC. A CD is a disc, or, if one wants to use the long form, a CD-ROM disc is a disc that fits in a CD-ROM. This is extremely common usage by those in the know, therefore the author is de-facto wrong.

UFO. While I'm not a Raelian, I'm very sure the common usage of the word UFO by such people is to mean anything that is unidentifiable as human.

OK. Flat out stupid griping by a person who has nothing to gripe about. OK is a valid acronym, spelt without periods. Don't like it? TS. Yeah, that's an acronym too. Look it up and be amazed! Oh, and on the internet we rarely put periods in acronyms. Common usage and all that again...

Drive. Please gripe more! Not! What the hell is this all about? Common usage by Billions and Billions (served) is Hard Disk. Don't like it? TS again!

Lite. Hey asshole, I'm a humanist and I spell it analog. Nice job putting words in people's mouths and ignoring how 300 million people spell things. Also good job ignoring entire dictionaries worth of information telling you you're wrong. I'll say it again: Asshole.

How can I trust a site that doesn't accept the common usage of words in their respective fields? Stop treading on people's toes, lest you be trodden on, pretentious grammarian.

Even that site has errors.

It decides to apply english to computer terms. That's a big mistake.

A list of his errors:

CD-ROM. A CD-ROM is a DRIVE, not a DISC. A CD is a disc, or, if one wants to use the long form, a CD-ROM disc is a disc that fits in a CD-ROM. This is extremely common usage by those in the know, therefore the author is de-facto wrong.

UFO. While I'm not a Raelian, I'm very sure the common usage of the word UFO by such people is to mean anything that is unidentifiable as human.

OK. Flat out stupid griping by a person who has nothing to gripe about. OK is a valid acronym, spelt without periods. Don't like it? TS. Yeah, that's an acronym too. Look it up and be amazed! Oh, and on the internet we rarely put periods in acronyms. Common usage and all that again...

Drive. Please gripe more! Not! What the hell is this all about? Common usage by Billions and Billions (served) is Hard Disk. Don't like it? TS again!

Lite. Hey asshole, I'm a humanist and I spell it analog. Nice job putting words in people's mouths and ignoring how 300 million people spell things. Also good job ignoring entire dictionaries worth of information telling you you're wrong. I'll say it again: Asshole.

How can I trust a site that doesn't accept the common usage of words in their respective fields? Stop treading on people's toes, lest you be trodden on, pretentious grammarian.

but it wouldn't of phased this laptop.

But would it have fazed the laptop?

Christ, man, I don't think it was the laptop that got fried by the heat...

but it wouldn't of phased this laptop.

But would it have fazed the laptop?

Christ, man, I don't think it was the laptop that got fried by the heat...

But you can't use the code snippets directly from a paper book.

And dead trees can't be grepped.

Dead trees can do one thing that digital formats cannot: run on any meatware interface, without power requirements. Also, dead tree formats remain viable long after the compiler is abandoned. Take for example, the story of Gilgamesh, which was compiled into an executable approximately 4,000 years ago. I challenge you to successfully run any code compiled only forty years ago (1%!).

True. I head to the WSU surplus prepriced sale/auction when they have it, more info here, and while the pre-priced is a little expensive for my taste, $45 for pentium 1 w/ 14" monitor, they have some great random stuff. Best yet: 2 arcade cabinets for auction. Ended up being $25/each. One had a working game board that sells used $900+, more about this in my journal.

I find it hilarious that you people have been suckered into paying what amounts to a daily fee for simply communicating with your friends.

Yes, I occasionally eat my own words.

Be careful with the begging the question link. That author's definition of One dimensionality is erroneus. He states that 'According to Euclid, no object can be one-dimensional".

Zero dimensions: point
One dimension: line
Two dimensions: plane

I prefer fractally dimensioned characters, myself.

Be careful with the begging the question link. That author's definition of One dimensionality is erroneus. He states that 'According to Euclid, no object can be one-dimensional".

Zero dimensions: point
One dimension: line
Two dimensions: plane

I prefer fractally dimensioned characters, myself.

This is completely different from begging the question, which means that in trying to prove something, you assume it's already true.

Both of these are completely different from what the summary author meant, which is "leads to the question."

when we hit the singularity and the oosphere becomes sentinent, because part of it is made up of /. , it's gonna be a troll. With a taste for tentacle rape.

..For all intensive purposes,...

what exactly is an intensive purpose?

did you mean "intents and purposes?"

Um... actually the idea of 'an eye for an eye' and 'a tooth for a tooth' was pretty much taken straight out of the Code of Hammurabi.

Check out paragraphs 196 and 200, specifically.

The Code of Hammurabi is the oldest known written legal code, older than the Hebrew law which you are attempting to contrast it with, and is considered to be the inspiration for most legal codes which followed it.

The Jews didn't invent the principle, they inherited it from the Babylonians.

Um... actually the idea of 'an eye for an eye' and 'a tooth for a tooth' was pretty much taken straight out of the Code of Hammurabi.

Check out paragraphs 196 and 200, specifically.

The Code of Hammurabi is the oldest known written legal code, older than the Hebrew law which you are attempting to contrast it with, and is considered to be the inspiration for most legal codes which followed it.

The Jews didn't invent the principle, they inherited it from the Babylonians.

• biography
  
  
• a study guide for Zarathustra
  
  
• an ecncylopedic reference in German and English
  
  
• secondary sources, all online
  
  
• original writings (English translations) and links to criticism
  
  
• Hypernietzsche (very advanced)
  
  
• Nietzsche listservs

Some background info from a world trade law student:

One: European governments are subsidizing Airbus development costs, which according to the U.S. violates WTO rules on subsidies. Of course, neither the EU nor the Bush administration can really be considered champions of unrestricted free trade.
[rant] Although economists and common sense agree that free trade results in a net wealth benefit (note that this doesn't imply a "fair" distribution of that wealth), special interest groups that have much to lose from free trade (unproductive industries, unions) find it easier to exert political influence in favor of protectionism than the average person-on-the-street, who stands to lose a few cents a day on account of a specific protectionist measure, of which he is generally not even aware. [/rant]

Two: There is of course no economical or technical reason at all to distribute this kind of megaconstruction project all over Europe. It is estimated that all the silly moving around of pieces increases construction cost by a two-figures percentage. The reason, of course, is a political one: every nation wants a piece of the cake...

A major part of the problem is that Penrose simply does not seem to accept Goedel's Incompleteness Theorems.

http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/its.html

metropolis's original prints go pd in 2022, but the transfers they made and broadcast to your hdtv carry new copyrights, to protect that work that went into the transfer, and won't go public domain for 95 years after they're made.

Copyright only protects creative works. Format shifting has never been considered creative work. If they were to remaster it (with, say, new audio), they might try claiming that the new work was restricted by copyright, but I would still be free to take just the video feed. This is why new editions of books don't reset copyright clocks, and why I'm free to copy just the original Shakespeare parts of book of annotated plays. Copyright law has been extended to some insane places, but it's not that bad. Yet.

Tracking down evidence on this is pretty hard, much like proving any negative. This page from Washington State University does mention the issue (See fact 21).

I stumbled (ok Googled) across some interesting and moving photos from Pripyat, the town where the Chernobyl workers were housed.
Shocking and worth a read / look.

It is viewed as an acronym, so yes, it may have an apostrophe.

here

I'm sure there are many other sites out there dealing with this. News flash: Comics aren't usually the definitive "foot being put down".

Should it possibly point: Here or possibly Here?

As I watched this movie it made me wonder if anyone involved with the movie had actually read the book. I mean, is it naive of me to assume that Hollywood-drones should read the books they base movies on? (I got the feeling Jackson really made an effort to do LOTR justice, but maybe he is an exception to the rule.) It seems as though Soderberg had only read the back cover, assumed it was a romance, and went from there. If he did read the book, then he truly needs to work on his reading comprehension skills .

Okay, I guess there are a lot of themes in the book that can be interpreted and focused on for the purposes of making a watchable movie, but to not even describe the history or any detail about the planet Solaris *at all* really irks me. I mean they hardly even mention the planet. Hello? The movie is called SOLARIS, after the fricken planet! Someone who hadn't read the book is going to come out of there wondering what that weird glowing planet in the background had to do with the movie. WTF?! No wonder all the critics are calling it a confusing mess of a story. They assume that Lem is somekind of incomprehensible philosophical weirdo, when really Soderberg is the one who left the book's plot out. Jeez!

This article (and any number of other tech articles from the NYT) has the byline Jennifer 8. Lee. Would someone mind explaining to me why her middle initial is a number? Did she name herself after the movie with Andy Garcia and Uma Thurman? Is Neuromancer involved in any way? I wanna know!

Bear in mind that the Internet is a global medium and not eveyone speaks English as a first language. Most native English speakers posting on Slashdot can't even get their own language right, as it appears that very few of them understand the difference between its and it's, who and whom or less and fewer, just to mention a few of the most common mistakes. (I mention these only in the misguided hope that at least a couple people will take this opportunity to figure it out.)

Bear in mind that the Internet is a global medium and not eveyone speaks English as a first language. Most native English speakers posting on Slashdot can't even get their own language right, as it appears that very few of them understand the difference between its and it's, who and whom or less and fewer, just to mention a few of the most common mistakes. (I mention these only in the misguided hope that at least a couple people will take this opportunity to figure it out.)

Bear in mind that the Internet is a global medium and not eveyone speaks English as a first language. Most native English speakers posting on Slashdot can't even get their own language right, as it appears that very few of them understand the difference between its and it's, who and whom or less and fewer, just to mention a few of the most common mistakes. (I mention these only in the misguided hope that at least a couple people will take this opportunity to figure it out.)